1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a feeding mechanism for a sheet material and a recording apparatus using such a mechanism.
2. Related Background Art
A printer, a copying machine, a facsimile apparatus, and other recording apparatuses are of such a structure that its recording head is driven in accordance with recording information to record images on a recording sheet such as a paper or plastic sheet.
For the recording apparatus mentioned above, the recording sheet is being fed automatically by a sheet feeding device besides its manual set for insertion. In general, the sheet feeding device is provided with a feed driving unit for feeding a recording sheet by rotating the feed roller, and an discharge tray unit for stacking the recorded sheets which have been discharged. The arrangement is made for this device so that by utilizing the driving force for the carrier system of the recording apparatus, the foregoing feed driving unit is driven to feed the foregoing recording sheets one by one separately.
However, since the sheet feeding device carries the recording sheet to be discharged while depressing the recording surface of the recording sheet with an discharge roller or a spur directly, there may be some cases where the traces of the roller or other marks remain on the recorded portion. Also, in a case of an ink jet recording apparatus or the like where ink liquid is ejected for recording, the roller depresses the inked surface to cause the occurrence of smudges.